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Would You Consider Leif More Important Than Other FE Lords?


Randoman
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Would you consider Leif more important than other FE lords? I mean, besides Marth and Ike, Leif is the only other lord to be canonically playable (as in, no Einherjar, amiibo scanning and recruiting, Trial Maps, etc.) in more than one Fire Emblem game. Even if he's a lord in only one game and just a regular playable character in the other, I still personally think it makes him more important than other lords like Alm, Micaiah, or Eirika, who have only canonically been playable in one Fire Emblem game.

Also, for this question, let's disregard all Smash Bros. related influences and points that use Smash Bros. to support arguments/claims. (such as a character "being more important" due to being playable in Smash, etc.)

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As much as I dislike Leif, if were just counting mainseries playable appearances, ie, not Einherjar or Amiibo, then yes, tho plenty more characters are still more important than him to the series overall.

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all the fact that he's shown up in multiple games means is that he's shown up in multiple games, it doesn't make him "more important"

"important" by what measure, anyway?

plus chrom and lucina have shown up in both smash and project x zone 2, and lucina has an amiibo. like if we're measuring "importance" by how prolific they are, she's getting up there.

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I like Leaf a lot but realistically he's probably the least important lord in the series bar Alm and Celica, at least among western audiences. Being in multiple games doesn't equate to importance. The GBA games were intro points for a lot of fans too. Modern lords that have only appeared in one game (Chrom, Corn, etc) are more important too, and they've already starred in multiple games.

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If you're basing it on games, they've appeared in w/o amiibo/dlc/trial map stuff then the Whitewings are the most important, which is pretty obviously not true,

Also there's Sothe who is a semi-lord in RD

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If number of appearances is your metric then the leads of BSFE are the most important.

Really though, what matters is the mind share that characters hold with the community. Leif hasn't really been relevant since Thracia came out nearly 20 years ago, he just can't compete with characters like Marth and Lucina or even Corrin.

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If you're basing it on games, they've appeared in w/o amiibo/dlc/trial map stuff then the Whitewings are the most important, which is pretty obviously not true,

Also there's Sothe who is a semi-lord in RD

Uh, I'm talking about Leif's importance compared to other FE lords, so arguments like the Whitewing sisters being the most important doesn't apply since we're sticking to lord comparisons only.
Also, for the purpose of this thread, we're not considering BS FE leads as actual lords, since they only star in one chapter and most people don't consider the BS FE chapters to be full-fledged FE games.
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okay but that doesn't address any of this

all the fact that he's shown up in multiple games means is that he's shown up in multiple games, it doesn't make him "more important"

"important" by what measure, anyway?

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okay but that doesn't address any of this

I guess if a character appears in more games that means they're done more notable things in the mythos?

I don't agree though, despite being an NPC Seliph is more prominent in Thracia's plot than Leaf is in Genealogy's.

Edited by Tricky Drick
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what do you mean by that?

It just seems like whenever FE gets something in outside media (or even its own) Jugdral is hardly ever referenced or acknowledged outside of like small things (Aka the things every other FE got like characters) in Awakening.

Smash is a good example of this, Jugdral got practically nothing while every other game apart from it got a remix or something (even left out of stickers in brawl).

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It just seems like whenever FE gets something in outside media (or even its own) Jugdral is hardly ever referenced or acknowledged outside of like small things (Aka the things every other FE got like characters) in Awakening.

Smash is a good example of this, Jugdral got practically nothing while every other game apart from it got a remix or something (even left out of stickers in brawl).

Smash doesn't count, seeing how IS aren't the ones making that series. The omission of Jugdral is weird but back then Nintendo seemed more hesitant to acknowledge Japanese-only releases in general. You can see that for example in how the FE6 art gallery got removed in PoR or how the European version of FE7 removed the cliffhanger at the end.

Anyway, I wouldn't say that Jugdral really got the short end of the stick in the games that are actually made by IS. The recruitment theme of FE4 was reused in FE6. Light and Darkness from FE4 got a remix for the Trial maps in PoR, Sigurd's theme got a remix in Shadow Dragon at the Arena entrance, the multiplayer maps of the remakes use a theme from Thracia, FE7 got a remix of the Silesia Palace theme... It's not a lot but considering that those games all take place in different settings, there is not a whole lot that they can do.

Edited by BrightBow
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I think Leif might just be the least important lord. The Tracia peninsula remains somewhat of a sideshow in the grand scheme of things. Even if Leif wins there he'l remain a second fiddle to Seliph and the one he wins from is Veld who is just a lackey to another lackey. To even win in the first place Leif needs Seliph to bail him out.

I suspect Jugdral is a bit like IS's black sheep. They don't like to focus on it and if they do its probably the better regarded Genealogy which gets more attention.

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I suspect Jugdral is a bit like IS's black sheep. They don't like to focus on it and if they do its probably the better regarded Genealogy which gets more attention.

I think it's just because when they ever feel the need to callback to the classic games, Marth is sort of the series mascot who everyone even passingly familiar with FE knows, so it's just easier to reference his games.

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Jugdral? Yes

The whole series? No

Leif is a cool lad but he is far from the most important Lord besides Mar-Mar and MIke. Mainly because Jugdral isn't as famous and because Thracia was more of a side story (from what I've played) while RD and MotE where sequels of grand scale.

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I think it's just because when they ever feel the need to callback to the classic games, Marth is sort of the series mascot who everyone even passingly familiar with FE knows, so it's just easier to reference his games.

True but I also think there is some favoritism for Akenaia going on. That continent gets the remakes, a sequel in Awakening and the crossover presence in Shin megami tensei. And that's understandable. It was the first continent and it seems pretty well regarded in Japan.

I think that what Jugdral suffers from the most is that its both the middle child and the weird duck. Its wasn't the first continent of the series nor was it the continent which opened the series to the west. It also has almost zero representation in smash.

Being so weird also makes it unlike the other games and thus harder to fit in. Genealogy has its huge maps and Tracia its infamous difficulty.

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Number of games =/= importance.

In fact Leif isn't all that important at all, which is kinda the point really. Part of his character is that he's not the one who will rise against the empire and save Jugdral, he's not the main hero.

The fact that Thracia 776 is so obscure and generally overshadowed by Genealogy is actually kinda fitting in a meta way.

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Sadly, no. Even though I think Leif technically SHOULD be. As in, he should've been in Melee over Roy, imo and thus should've had all the attention that Roy got as a result.

I do think Leif is more important than a few lords though, namely Alm, Celica, Sigurd, and Seliph.

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I am legitimately curious as to how some of the posters here define and consider importance.

Leif doesn't have particularly great significance and isn't nearly as influential as many other lords.

Even in the context of his own story he isn't the most important character(which again, is the point).

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I am legitimately curious as to how some of the posters here define and consider importance.

Leif doesn't have particularly great significance and isn't nearly as influential as many other lords.

Even in the context of his own story he isn't the most important character(which again, is the point).

I personally posted before I considered anything beyond number of games he's appeared in. Now that I've actually had time to think about it beyond that, I actually regret my first post in this thread.

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I would say Ike is the most important in both lore and to Fire Emblem as a whole. Story wise he united 2 nations and a bunch of misfits into an army to take down the kind that was bent upon conquest. After that he yet again helps in united people, fights against a deity and her minions including multiple powerful spell casters, a dragon that is extremely old and powerful, the Black Knight, and Ashera herself, and wins the fight. Story wise he may even be the most powerful lord out of all of them.

Outside of the story, Ike is one of the most recognizable FE characters to the gaming community. He isn't like your normal JRPG protagonist that looks 15 years old and like he hasnt eaten in about a week, so he really stands out from the rest. He also has Smash to help him with being well known, and its kind of hard not to bring that up as its really what gave Fire Emblem a shot overseas. Without it, Fire Emblem would be either a dead game right now, or a Japan only release.

Edited by Tolvir
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Leif is definitely one of the most important character in Jugdral saga, even if his overall part in the war itself isn't big thanks to how.... weird the writer priority goes in FE4. As said in page 1, the entire point of Thracia's characterization of Leif is exactly because he's not that important of a character.

Mainly because in FE4 we had no less than 3 Chapter dedicated towards Thracian conflicts. The game literally questions why the fuck you are there when Leif isn't even important. This massive focus probably results in FE5 itself

Overall(read; popularity wise) he's not all that big due to being JP only lord. The same can be said for Sigurd and Seliph. With Sigurd being the least important. I remember someone looking up the popularity stats of these 3 and the gist is basically Seliph is the most popular due to being a generic blue haired pretty boy lord. Leif is one of the more popular gen 2 unit. Sigurd isn't even the most popular character in his part of the game(that honor goes to Finn)

Also writing wise, Ike is such a complete rip off from Leif its actually unbelievable

Edited by JSND
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